Trying to work on kitty dps. Is this expected?

I was wondering (if you can see it in the pic), there is areas under the melee section where I am hit/exp capped, but I seem to have stuff like glancing, parry, etc.. on it. Is there a way to fix this as I'm hitting a target/boss? Is this expected from ferals that raid all the time?

You shouldn't be able to miss if you are hit capped, but i do see you are only soft expertise capped, which means you wont get dodged, but you will still be able to get parried. You shouldn't get parried either anyhow, cause you will always attack from behind with Shred, and you cant get parried when your hitting from behind.

On another note, I wouldn't recommend using recount nor skada for such things, but instead use a parce, like World of Logs or something similar.

You shouldn't be able to miss if you are hit capped, but i do see you are only soft expertise capped, which means you wont get dodged, but you will still be able to get parried. You shouldn't get parried either anyhow, cause you will always attack from behind with Shred, and you cant get parried when your hitting from behind.

On another note, I wouldn't recommend using recount nor skada for such things, but instead use a parce, like World of Logs or something similar.

Those are valid points, Magania. I want to point out though that I am spending a majority of the time from behind. I do observer that there is times where the boss will be facing me and that could cause the parrying that I see. I try to spend most of the time (positionally) from behind. I use a macro that has Shred/Rake on it, it would be nice that if i was in front to switch Shred to Mangle, but I know it's not possible.

Just use mangle. It's like a tenth of a percent dps loss. Alternatively, use mangle mostly but cycle in shreds during berserk and tiger's fury, I think that's actually a dps increase if you do it right. There you go, no positional requirements.

Just use mangle. It's like a tenth of a percent dps loss. Alternatively, use mangle mostly but cycle in shreds during berserk and tiger's fury, I think that's actually a dps increase if you do it right. There you go, no positional requirements.

This is 100% false. Shred has the same base and multiplier damage as mangle, but an additional 20% against bleeding targets which yours always will be. It is a HUGE DPS loss to use mangle over shred.

I was wondering (if you can see it in the pic), there is areas under the melee section where I am hit/exp capped, but I seem to have stuff like glancing, parry, etc.. on it. Is there a way to fix this as I'm hitting a target/boss? Is this expected from ferals that raid all the time?

assuming you are capped, glancing will always happen, and parries mean you were not behind.

This is 100% false. Shred has the same base and multiplier damage as mangle, but an additional 20% against bleeding targets which yours always will be. It is a HUGE DPS loss to use mangle over shred.

It also only costs 87.5% of shred, saving you 5 energy per use so it's not as huge as you think. He's wrong to say its a dps increase, but it's not as huge of a loss as you portray

I'm not sure which spinning bosses you're referring to but afaik most of them can be fixed by having your tank face them towards the ranged so when they cast on a ranged they don't turn. And if it's a boss you know will block your shreds by turning then play at lower energy levels so you don't cap energy waiting to get shred off. The shred glyph is also recommended because it lets you use shred no matter what during TF and berserk which are the two times your energy is going to be closest to capping.

It also only costs 87.5% of shred, saving you 5 energy per use so it's not as huge as you think. He's wrong to say its a dps increase, but it's not as huge of a loss as you portray

I'm not sure which spinning bosses you're referring to but afaik most of them can be fixed by having your tank face them towards the ranged so when they cast on a ranged they don't turn. And if it's a boss you know will block your shreds by turning then play at lower energy levels so you don't cap energy waiting to get shred off. The shred glyph is also recommended because it lets you use shred no matter what during TF and berserk which are the two times your energy is going to be closest to capping.

You wouldn't trade 5 energy for 20% more damage? Values taken from agixx talking about rune:

Shred does 75k damage, losing that 20% mangle does 60,000.

It would take 8 uses of mangle over shred to gain another mangle.

After 8 uses of mangle over shred, your mangle damage is now 120,000 (15,000 per difference, 8 times) lower than shred, but then you gain your extra mangle from the saved energy which gives you 60,000...still a whole 60K short of being worth it. So, is it still not worth it to shred?

Don't forget that you also gain the combo points from the mangle (~1.4) which are also worth damage. Lets say that we are perfect with savage roar and rip and those combos only go to ferocious bite. My fb averages around 175k, and 1.4/5* 174 is about 50k.

So overall, in 8 usages of shred, you lose maybe 10k dps vs 9 usages of mangle, but that's not even accounting for your higher uptime on rip, better clipping of savage roar, etc. It'll take a few hundred thousand simcraft runs to resolve the actual loss, but it's less than 10k.

So how much of a loss is 10k? I took a look at one of my better logs, it seems over a 12.5 min fight I casted 99 mangles + shreds. So lets say it takes about a minute for you to cast 8 shreds - heck, lets be generous and say that it takes you 40 seconds. I do around 5 mil damage in 40 seconds, losing 10k on 5 mil is 0.2%.

Again, it's been simmed before to show that using mangle exclusively over shred is like a 0.1% dps loss, and intelligently weaving mangle and shred together is very likely a dps gain although I don't think anyone has hard data on that. And this is assuming absolutely pristine conditions where you are behind the boss 100% of the time and savage roaring/ripping without fail, which is basically impossible. In practice, capping 5 energy in a 10 minute fight or using a 4 combo roar vs a 5 combo roar a couple times probably sets you back far more than using mangle vs shred and for anyone who has any positioning complaints, mangle is very likely to be the higher dps generator to use.

Which takes me back to my original advice: just use mangle if you're getting positioning issues. If it costs any dps at all, it's next to nothing and it'll make your life a lot easier.

(Anecdotal data: for what it's worth, I freely use mangles and shreds when I dps depending on my mood/positioning and I see basically no damage difference. I also hold or have held #1 feral parses for most of the fights this tier on 25H.)

You wouldn't trade 5 energy for 20% more damage? Values taken from agixx talking about rune:

Shred does 75k damage, losing that 20% mangle does 60,000.

It would take 8 uses of mangle over shred to gain another mangle.

After 8 uses of mangle over shred, your mangle damage is now 120,000 (15,000 per difference, 8 times) lower than shred, but then you gain your extra mangle from the saved energy which gives you 60,000...still a whole 60K short of being worth it. So, is it still not worth it to shred?

Did i say anywhere to mangle over shred? No, i said it wasn't as big of a loss in dps, in fact i recommended ways to make shred easier to manage. Read someone's whole post before replying to it. That being said you're still not counting the extra 1-2 cps you get from the extra mangle.

The difference between Mangle and Shred is almost completely negligible, the only time it matters is:

You're not able to spend energy fast enough with Mangle so you cap out on energy (the same can be said with shred).

You're standing in front of the boss and spamming Mangle when you could be standing behind the boss.

Point two is really the big point. Shreds positioning requirement is good because it keeps you from wasting your energy on attacks that could be parried when you otherwise have an option to be behind the boss.

As others have said, the fact that mangle costs 5 less energy AND generates you the same amount of combo points (meaning that using mangle increases the frequency of finishers which GAINS you damage) negates the fact that it does less damage.

Originally Posted by kaiadam

Alternatively, use mangle mostly but cycle in shreds during berserk and tiger's fury, I think that's actually a dps increase if you do it right. There you go, no positional requirements.

Not exactly correct, but close I suppose. If you use mangle at the right times to take advantage of the fact that it lets you generate combo points faster, it is a small DPS gain.

For example, your Rip and Savage Roar are about to fall off at around the same time and you're at 1 CP and it's a while before TF will be off CD. If you use Mangle instead of Shred it, given the appropriate timing, it may greatly increase the chance that you can get to 5 combo points before your SR falls off, which will allow you to apply Rip, and the use the SotF return to immediately refresh SR.

If you had used Shred instead, your chances of being able to do this may have been much lower, and you would've likely had to spend for 4 CP on refreshing your Savage Roar, and then had to generate another 5 CP to put Rip back up. This would lead to 10 or so seconds of Rip downtime which is a LOT of damage loss.

Some more info about Glancing Blows for those who don't know:

Against mobs with defense roughly equal to or higher than your Attack Rating (i.e. your weapon skill), you will have a chance to land a glancing blow instead of a normal hit. A glancing blow only occurs on white melee damage and does less damage than a normal blow. If the attacker's weapon skill is less than his level * 5, the damage reduction will be proportional to the difference between the attacker's weapon skill and the target's defense.

Source: http://www.wowpedia.org/Glancing_blow
Weapon skills are now defunct, of course, but I believe the game still uses these calculations internally so it's still completely relevant.

You wouldn't trade 5 energy for 20% more damage? Values taken from agixx talking about rune:

Shred does 75k damage, losing that 20% mangle does 60,000.

It would take 8 uses of mangle over shred to gain another mangle.

After 8 uses of mangle over shred, your mangle damage is now 120,000 (15,000 per difference, 8 times) lower than shred, but then you gain your extra mangle from the saved energy which gives you 60,000...still a whole 60K short of being worth it. So, is it still not worth it to shred?

In addition to everything else that was already said...

Shred does 20% more damage than Mangle if a bleed is present. That does mean Mangle's damage times 1.2 is equal to Shred's damage. Shred's average is 75k.